How to comment multiple images at once

Question

On Windows I had that nice bar on the bottom with the exif entries that I can't manage to make appear on Ubuntu (I'm on Lubuntu but I've tried Mate and Plasma 5.4 too). I've tried with exiftool: exiftool -Comment='my comment' <directory> but once I check with gThumb, under Comment > Description there's nothing written. How can I batch comment a bunch of pictures?

Answer 1

This is an example of ExifTool FAQ #3. On a test photo, edit the description in gThumb with something unique, then use the command exiftool -a -G1 -s FILE to see what is the actual tag that is being edited.

I did some quick searches to try and see what metadata gThumb is actually editing but it was of little value. I would suggest checking the Caption-Abstract, Description, and ImageDescription tags as those are the most likely tags that gThumb is reading for the Comment > Description.

edit: Found info that gThumb can read EXIF, IPTC, and XMP metadata, so it might be reading any or all of the above three tags I mentioned for its Description entry. I'd suggest trying exiftool -Description='my comment' <directory> as your command.

edit 2: I found this post on the ExifTool forums that indicates that when writing, gThumb is probably using both Description and Caption-Abstract. Description is part of the more modern XMP standard, so I suggest using the command in my first edit, though using Caption-Abstract is also an option.